Computerizing a Cambridge Tradition: Testing Preference Voting on a Computer Program

Rob Richie and Howard Fain

For over fifty years, the City of Cambridge has counted ballots in its
municipal elections by hand. The preference voting form of proportional
representation system used for city council and school board elections
requires counting and transferring voters' ballots in a manner for
which there was no known machine technology count when the system was
adopted in Cambridge in 1941.

A study by FairVote-the Center for Voting and Democracy indicates that
Cambridge and other cities that adopt preference voting will never
again be forced to count ballots by hand. A city may choose to conduct
the count by hand, but with computer technology, the study conclusively
demonstrates that it is entirely feasible and affordable to conduct a
count by computer.

FairVote's program -- called PRMaster 1 -- produced final results using
Cambridge's counting rules with 22,962 ballots from the 1991 city
council election in two minutes on a personal home computer. The
accuracy of the results are well within the margin of error created by
the manual data entry process used in the study.

Cambridge will need to weigh the value of maintaining a community
tradition of hand-counting that is important to many people versus the
delay and citizen misunderstanding of the process that comes with the
hand-count. The following were judged by the Center as important
considerations in the city's decision to convert to a computer count:

Cost: The current hand-count involves costs to the
taxpayer. Computerizing the count also would cost taxpayers, but after
one-time acquisition of software and hardware, computerization
undoubtedly would save money.

New voting machines: Many localities around the country
are considering or have already implemented upgrades of their voting
machines to such systems as electronic voting booths and scanning
systems. These mechanisms for voting would make computerization of the
count particularly sensible because they would permit direct recording
of data to be used by a computer program. Without further research, it
is unclear whether other voting machines would allow the City to avoid
having to input ballot data manually in order to use a computer program.

Manual data entry: To save money, the Center did not seek
to validate the data entry with a system of "reverse checking." There
are errors in the manual data entry used in this trial, although we
calculate total errors as likely less than 1%. Even though the data
entry process could be improved, it still might cause some voter
distrust that could be avoided by voting machines that would record
data directly and thus eliminate the need to use manual entry.

Recounts and filling of vacancies: Whatever savings came with a computerized count would be magnified by any
situation that requires a re-count of ballots. For a contested result
calling for a re-count or to fill a vacancy, the computer program could
conduct a re-count within minutes, with no additional costs.

More precise ballot transfers: An important finding of
this report is that Cambridge voters should be confident that the
current "random draw" rules of transferring surplus ballots from
elected candidates are unlikely to affect the results. Nevertheless,
given civic traditions emphasizing the value of every vote, an argument
can be made in favor of a more precise method of ballot transfer that
would ensure that every voter's ballot is treated equally and that
would remove any uncertainty about "randomness." Computer programs
provide great flexibility for such refinements of the method of
counting.

Invalid ballots: New voting machines that directly record
data from the voter could lessen the number of invalid ballots cast.
Although the current percentage of invalid ballots is well under 2%,
new voting machines could reduce this percentage to near zero. Even
without new machines, a computer program could reduce invalid ballots
by slightly modifying the rules to allow "x" voting, as described in
the report -- a computer program can deal with the counting
complexities that come with "x" votes (which are treated as tie votes)
much more easily than is possible in a hand-count.

Voter participation: It is not clear whether voter
participation in Cambridge elections is affected by misunderstanding of
the preference voting system -- particularly because turnout is very
high compared to most localities -- but it is possible that any such
misunderstanding is magnified by the length of the count. Computerizing
the count would produce results in a timely manner more in keeping with
other elections in which Cambridge residents vote.

Other localities' consideration of the preference voting system: As
other localities often are wary of the prospect of organizing and
running a hand-count, the successful example of a computerized count in
Cambridge would increase prospects of other localities adopting
preference voting. Such a trend could be good for Cambridge, both for
strengthening its voters' confidence in the system and in removing
whatever burden the city might have in using an "exotic" voting system.

Community traditions: Although the count can be conducted
in under two minutes using computers, the program could be adapted to
maintain the Cambridge tradition of studying and discussing each
transfer of ballots in a public setting. The program could be written
to stop after each count until activated to do the next count.

This article is from the introduction of a report prepared by the
Center for Voting and Democracy for the Cambridge Board of Elections in
June 1994.

In Detroit, there have been three mayors in the past two years and the current one has come under scrutiny. Perhaps a system like instant runoff voting will help bring political stability to motor city.